


All His Fault

by 9r7g5h



Category: Tangled (2010)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 04:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9r7g5h/pseuds/9r7g5h
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite how the events of their adventure turned out, Pascal couldn’t help but hate Eugene. Mainly because it was all his fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All His Fault

Although he felt guilty about it, Pascal could not help but hate Eugene.

Before he had come along, breaking into their tower and disrupting their lives, he and Rapunzel had been just fine, living with the woman they both had believed was her mother. Yes, life in the tower could get a bit repetitive at times, and they both had wanted to see what the floating lights were, but they had been content. They had been safe, warm, well fed, things the real world could not always offer.

Before he had found the tower, Pascal had lived in the forest just outside of the valley. Abandoned by his parents in the traditional chameleon way the moment he had been born, life had been a constant struggle, a never ending fight to obtain whatever it was that he needed to survive. Although he had been lucky, he had seen many of his friends and siblings killed off and devoured by something higher up on the food chain then them. He had been in his share of fights over resources, and considering the fact that he was still alive, he had been fairly successful.

But there had never been any love. When he said ‘friends,’ he meant the other lizards that had been smart enough to not try and steal his things, so they had been able to live together. When he mentioned his siblings, while they were bound by blood, there had been no comrade between them. In fact, it seemed that the worse battles he had been in had involved one of his brothers or sisters, their connection just giving them an even larger reason to try and kill each other.

It was the wild, and in the wild you took care of yourself or died.

For the few years of his life he had lived like this, surviving from one day to the next without thought as to what else there might be besides his chunk of forest. It was not a good life, nor an easy one, but it was his and he had decided to accept the challenges it would throw at him. The biggest, strongest, and best chameleon in the woods, Pascal would have been the chameleon king, if they had had a form of monarchy.

And then there was the bird.

Pascal had always scorned those that had gotten captured and eaten, for their deaths proved they were not fit to survive. Whether it was birds or wolves or the occasional cat that wandered through the forests, a proper chameleon was always aware of the dangers that lurked in the shadows, always alert to the world around them. It was the only way one could survive, the only way not to die.

But it had been spring at the time, when young chameleons did the stupidest of things to attract the attention of their possible mates. Already being the biggest and strongest of the males there, Pascal had had no trouble attracting interest from the majority of the females, though his knack for changing color had not hurt. But there was one female, a couple of months younger than him, that had caught his eye, a catch that had him falling head over heels in love with her. So, just like all the other males he had not been able to scare off, Pascal decided to do the stupidest and most deadly things he could think of to show just how strong and brave he was.

His first stunt turned out to be his downfall.

For the most part, all the chameleons in the woods stayed a dull greenish brown in color, one that easily blended in with the grass and trees. They also stayed out of open spaces, the security of the tree cover protecting them from their aerial predators. To impress his lovely lady, he had turned a brilliant yellow and walked out into the middle of a clearing, hoping that, once she saw how brave he was, she would come running into his arms, forever becoming his.

What he walked into was the claws of an overhead eagle, its presence hidden by a covering of rain clouds.

The moment he felt the talons pierce his tail, Pascal had known he was lost, his life forfeit as he traveled on to meet his death. Within moments the bird had risen over the tree line, higher than any chameleon had ever been before. The ground rushed by underneath him, faster than he had ever seen it move, the forest blending into a single green blur as the bird made its way to its nest.

Then, just as he had given up, had been preparing himself for what he had thought at the time as his inevitable end, a rock had hit the bird’s wing, dropping him onto the windowsill of the home of the girl who would become his best friend in the entire world.

Their relationship had been rough in the beginning, to say the least. It had quickly become apparent to him that, other than her mother, the little girl, who he soon came to know as Rapunzel, had never seen another living creature. Locked away from the world in her tower, she had never experienced the harsh lessons that life often dealt, the rare innocence that manifested in children preserved through her isolation. And because of that, she had been fascinated with him, always asking him questions that he had to respond to lest he risk upsetting the child. He had never been good with young ones, their mothers having often times driven him off whenever he tried to examine their closely guarded eggs.

But as time passed, he came to love her. Always so full of life and joy, there was a promise of safety in her touch, something he had never felt before. She was kind and caring, always treating him like an equal instead of a pet or pest, acting as if she really cared for his opinion. And there was love. Not the kind he had felt for that one female so long ago, but the love that he could only guess belonged between parents and their young, or between friends that had known each other for a long, long time. Pascal loved Rapunzel more than anything he could ever describe.

Which was why he hated Eugene. Although he himself had often mentioned to Rapunzel the possibility of leaving the tower, they had both known that, without the permission of her mother, she never would. It was their lot in life to remain within the safety of their circular walls, cut off from the harsh cruelties that would break someone so innocent. And Pascal had been happy with that. Rapunzel was protected, which was all he had ever wanted.

But Eugene changed that. Just by entering their world, by climbing up through their window into the main room of the tower, he had taken away the shield that surrounded Rapunzel, opening her up for the pain he had once lived. Eugene had brought love, happiness, and understanding to their little world, but at the same time he had brought pain, destruction, heart break, and death. He had helped Rapunzel find her real parents, but he had taken away the only mother she had ever known.

So, it was these nights, when Rapunzel cried out in her sleep as she tried to save the woman she had loved as her mother but ultimately failed, when her tears soaked through to the underside of her pillow and the edge of her comforter as she battled with her demons, that Pascal truly hated Eugene.

He always felt guilty about it, for Rapunzel loved him, but that never changed the fact that it was all his fault.


End file.
